Failure by Design
by blink182giirl
Summary: In which Law makes things hard when someone tries to help.


_**Based on the song Failure by Design by Brand New.**_

* * *

"_And we just want sleep but this night is hell. I'm sick and sunk and I blame myself, 'cause I make things hard and you're just trying to help."_

* * *

Trafalgar Law's eyes were getting heavy, blurring the lines of the text in front of him. Fucking hell, this was torture. Between the end of his first year of residency and studying for the final part of his licensing exam, he just wasn't getting any sleep whatsoever.

Granted, sleep deprivation was normal for him, but this level of it was not.

Normally, he could grab at least three hours or so a night, but lately? He was lucky if he got even forty-five minutes.

"Law."

He looked up from his notes to see his friend and fellow surgical resident leaning against the wall. She had her arms crossed and hair pulled back into a messy bun at the nape of her neck, looking at him with bloodshot eyes.

"Yeah?" He asked.

"The census is down," she said. "You should get some sleep."

"I'm fine," he said.

She rolled her eyes and walked over to where he was sitting on the floor. She was right of course, the census was down, so Law took the opportunity to go to an empty hallway and study. It wasn't ideal, sitting on a rock hard floor with books and notes spread out around him. But still. It was better than going to an on-call room. He just would have been too tempted to sleep otherwise.

"You're really not though," she retorted. She sat down beside him, her leg bumping against his and let out a sigh.

"You're one to talk," he muttered. "You should also be getting sleep but here you are lecturing me instead."

"Yeah, but that's better than studying on an empty tank."

It was his turn to roll his eyes.

He went back to studying, dutifully ignoring his friend—if he could even call her that. They were more acquaintances than anything else, meeting back in med school and having the same class schedule and doing rotations together. Hell, they even matched into the same surgical program and ended up on the same surgical team.

It was like the universe just wanted them to be friends, so Law begrudgingly made peace with the fact that they were just stuck with each other.

Which normally was fine. They were both stubborn by nature and competitive when it came to their work, so they pushed each other to be better. But in this particular moment? He just wanted to be left alone to study and not be lectured by someone who was already feeling way too confident in herself.

But thankfully, she was quiet.

She just sat beside him, arms crossed and head resting against the back wall with her eyes shut. She had to be exhausted. They both were with the exam right around the corner. Why not utilize the census being low and take a quick nap?

"Go get some sleep," he grunted.

She yawned and said a tired, "not until you do."

He could feel his eye twitch. She had some nerve.

"I don't need to sleep."

"Really? You've got bags under your eyes for days."

"That's just my face."

"They're not normally that bad."

His fingers tightened around his pen and he turned to scowl at her. Usually, one nasty glare from him was enough to deter most people from bothering him, but not her. Her eyes were still closed, arms still crossed, head still propped against the wall, looking perpetually unbothered.

And it pissed him the fuck off.

"Why don't you mind your own business?" He snapped.

That got her to open her eyes and finally turn her head to look him square in the eye, eyebrows raised in surprise.

"Law—"

He wasn't sure what it was. Maybe it was the stress from the exam just around the corner, maybe it was the fact that he was at the tail end of a thirty-two-hour shift, or maybe it was the fact that he hadn't gotten more than forty-five minutes of uninterrupted sleep in the last three weeks, but he just kinda _snapped_.

"You heard me. Mind your own damn business. If I want to study until my eyes bleed then I'll study until my fuckin' eyes bleed. We all can't be natural goddamn geniuses like you. So again, why don't you mind your own business and get the hell out of my face?"

He could have heard a pin drop in the silence that followed his nasty little outburst.

Her eyes, bloodshot from lack of sleep, widened. She opened her mouth to say something but then closed it. Without another word, she pushed herself up from the floor and dusted herself off.

"I was just trying to help," she mumbled.

She didn't come back after that. The next time he saw her was on their way out of the hospital, getting done right around the same time as always. He wanted to talk to her, but she would have wanted an apology and he didn't think one was warranted. She had been the one bothering him after all. It wasn't his fault that he snapped at her. She should have known better.

She hardly talked to him at all during the next few weeks, and the only time she did had been because they were on the same surgical team. The days passed without incident. He still studied until he passed out in empty backlit hallways and she still kept her distance.

Then the day of the exam finally came and went, and Law went home and slept for sixteen hours straight.

Then, just like that, he was back at the hospital.

Turns out though that all of that studying and sleep deprivation didn't do shit to help his immune system, because at the beginning of his first shift back he found himself with a sore throat, stuffy nose, and an annoying cough.

"You sound like shit," Penguin remarked during a brief lunch break the two managed to steal between surgeries.

Law only grunted in response as he picked at a granola bar. He wasn't really hungry, but his body ached enough to make him want a break. So when Penguin said he was going to take fifteen minutes to eat, Law decided to join him.

"You sick or something?" Penguin asked.

"Seems like it," Law said under his breath, pushing his granola bar to the side.

"There you are!" Came another voice.

Law and Penguin looked at the door of the break room where _she_ came in, gritting her teeth and glaring absolute daggers at an unsuspecting Penguin.

"What gives? You don't answer your pages anymore?" She shouted. She stormed over to Penguin, hands on her hips, and getting right in his face to give him one of the nastiest scowls Law ever seen from her.

"What are you talking about?" Penguin asked. "I haven't gotten paged all day."

Law almost winced. He could see where this was going from a mile away.

"Think about what you just said, Penguin," she snapped, shoving her index finger into his chest. "Name one shift since you started where you didn't get a single page!"

Penguin blinked a few times as her words sank in and then just about yelped when he dug his pager out of his pocket and pressed the buttons a few times, only to find that the battery was dead.

"_Penguin_," Law said with a groan, rubbing his forehead. How could he do something so stupid and forgetful?

"Who the hell do you think gets paged when you don't answer? Me! I'm the one who gets paged! You got a lot of nerve just hanging out and eating a goddamn sandwich with _Princess_ over here when I've been dealing your patients all goddamn day!"

Law stared at her. _Princess_?

Penguin squealed and stood up, sandwich forgotten as he threw his white coat on.

"Shit, I'm so sorry! I gotta replace the battery!" He then proceeded to pretty much run out of the break room, leaving her and Law alone, the air suddenly heavier than it had been moments ago.

Law sighed, "did you just call me Princess?"

She raised an eyebrow at him, leaving one hand on her hip as she looked him over.

"Oh, so you're speaking to me now?"

He frowned. Seriously? Was she really going to be that petty?

And judging from the unamused look on her face, the answer was a resounding yes.

"I'm pretty sure you're the one ignoring me," he said. It was true. He hadn't apologized for what he said to her and wasn't planning on it. But still, that didn't mean he was trying to ignore her. If anything, he acted completely and totally normal. She was the one blatantly pretending that he didn't exist.

"Well I was just minding my own business," she retorted.

He groaned and rubbed his temples. He was getting a headache on top of all his other symptoms and just didn't have it in him to deal with her bullshit.

"Yeah," she pressed when he was silent. "Silly me just trying to help out a friend who was working himself to death. But _nooo_ I'm just a—"

She stopped mid-speech when he started coughing.

Fucking hell, was this his punishment for prioritizing his career? Was this what happened to people who took shit seriously? It must have been because Penguin seemed just fine after taking the licensing exam and he didn't take anything even half as serious as Law did. This must have just been some divine punishment he got for caring too much about his work.

"Oh great," she remarked, words dripping with sarcasm. "Look at you. You're sick as a dog. I bet it's because you barely slept at all these last few weeks. You know, if you would have just liste—"

"_All right_, Woman!" Law said with a huff, going right back to rubbing his temples in an attempt to ease his growing headache.

She let out a little huff of her own and before he even knew what she was doing, he felt a cool hand against his forehead.

"The hell are you doing?" He grumbled, feeling his face get warm for some reason.

Her eyebrows knit together in worry and the corner of her lips pulled downward.

"Law, you're burning up."

Her voice was softer than he had ever heard it before. She usually was the type to get in someone's face and snap at them the way she had done with Penguin or settled for snarky little quips under her breath. But for as long as he'd known her, Law had never once heard her speak to anyone that gently who wasn't a patient.

"I'm fine," he muttered, shooing her hand away from him.

She shook her head, still frowning and giving him that sad little puppy dog look. But if she was planning on lecturing him again, she was going to be sorely disappointed because his pager went off and called him into emergency surgery.

"I gotta go," he said, brushing past her without looking back.

He felt a little pang of guilt in his chest, just enough for him to register it but not enough for him to act on it. So he did what he did best and ignored it, scrubbing in for surgery, assisting when allowed, and going through the motions.

Only surgery took longer than he anticipated and by the time he got out of the OR his head was pounding, his throat was on fire, his body fucking ached, and he was certain that his fever spiked to _not-so-great-you-really-should-go-home_ levels.

Too bad he had another twelve hours in his shift to go.

Law sought refuge in the break room, trying to work on a note while wallowing in self-pity.

It was fucking bullshit that he got as sick as he did.

Penguin didn't get sick. Shachi didn't get sick either. Nobody did.

Why the hell was it just him? What kind of bullshit was that?

He looked away from his note in confusion when a paper cup accompanied by two pills suddenly appeared on the desk. He didn't even have to look to see who was responsible. He already knew.

"Ibuprofen for your fever and herbal tea for your throat and sinuses."

Law looked at the pills and cup before saying a casual, "is this a peace offering?"

She scoffed, "you're the one who should be giving me the peace offering."

He smirked and took the pills without question, sipping the herbal tea and sighing in relief when his throat didn't burn as he swallowed.

"Thanks," he said finally.

"Mhm," she hummed, placing a hand on his shoulder and giving it a light squeeze. "Try to get some sleep tonight."

He closed his eyes, leaning as far back as he could in his chair and nodded.

She let go of him and he could hear her footsteps as she walked away, the door opening and closing as she left.

He kept his eyes closed for a few moments longer, trying to find the energy to get through the rest of his shift.

Maybe it wasn't so bad when she didn't mind her own business after all.

* * *

_**I'm on a major One Piece trip right now and I ain't even mad about it.**_

_**All controversy regarding Jesse Lacey aside, I just dig the song and there's lines in it that scream Law to me.**_

_**Ugh. Love him. So much. Whatta babe.**_


End file.
